Zarathustra as Nietzsche\'s Odysseus

Zarathustra as Nietzsche's Odysseus

Prefatory Supplements: Human, All Too​ Human #519: Truth ​ as Circe. Error has turned animals into men; might truth be capable of turning man into an animal again? Assorted Opinions​ and Maxims #212: Yes, the Favour of the Muses! — What Homer says on this point goes right to our heart, so true, so terrible is it: "The Muse loved him with all her heart and gave him good and evil, for she took away his eyes and vouchsafed him sweet song”. This is an endless text for thinking men: she gives good and evil, that is her manner of loving with all her heart and soul! And each man will interpret specially for himself why we poets and thinkers have to give up our eyes in her service.

Assorted Opinions ​ and Maxims #408:

​ The Journey to Hades. I too have been in the underworld, even as Odysseus, and I shall often be there again. Not sheep alone have I sacrificed, that I might be able to converse with a few dead souls, but not even my own blood have I spared. There were four pairs who responded to me in my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I have to come to terms. When I have long wandered alone, I will let them prove me right or wrong; to them will I listen, if they prove each other right or wrong. In all that I say, conclude, or think out for myself and others, I fasten my eyes on those eight and see their eyes fastened on mine. May the living forgive me if I look upon them at times as shadows, so pale and fretful, so restless and, alas, so eager for life. Those eight, on the other hand, seem to me so living that I feel as if even now, after their death, they could never become weary of life. But eternal vigour of life is the important point: what matters "eternal life” or indeed life at all?

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra strides onto the stage of Nietzsche's corpus as exemplary of the teaching on “the pathos of distances” in its fullest form by encompassing the whole of the fundamentally problematic rhetorical situation Nietzsche understands himself to be in. This situation as Nietzsche understands it is the following constellation of interrelated problems concerning the presentation of philosophy: (1) the relation of the interpreter to who is presenting what is to be interpreted, (2) the limitations to articulating what is to be interpreted (viz., insight as opposed to demonstrable knowledge), and (3) the limitations to communication that insight to others. In the terms of his other writings, one can say that TSZ is a guide for discerning the grey-beards, asses, and old maids lacking the youthful vitality and vigor of soul required to productively assimilate the deadly truths of modern science. This is particularly true given that Nietzsche expects many if not most of his readers to be such grey-beards, asses, and old maids who will eventually found entire departments of universities devoted to the study of TSZ (EH Preface #4) and, hence, the institutionalization and subsequent trickling-down effect of Zarathustra into popular culture. Accordingly, the requisite distance of pathos Nietzsche imposes upon the reader of TSZ to loosen one’s pre-reflective and hence insufficiently Nietzschean “self” from the grip of modernity's ideals begins with the title's namesake. Nietzsche's retrogressive return (GS #34; HH #273; WS #186) to Zoroaster compels his readers to place "at least the skin of three hundred years between [himself] and today" (GS #338, 378; cf. HH #616) and reflect upon the first theodicy dependent upon antithetical valuations of good and evil. Accordingly, the meaning of art (Zarathustra is a poet [2.17]) and the "nobler way of making use of the invention of gods"

(GM 2.23; Zarathustra is a lover of pious people [4.6] as well as a soothsayer [4.2]) of TSZ are indicative of the supreme task of philosophy as Nietzsche understands it (RWB sect. 4 [213]), which is to say the beautifying of the deadly truths for mankind (GS #299 276) through the creation of values attendant upon the radical fluidity of all concepts. Nietzsche understands TSZ as exemplary of the broadest conception of art wherein the goal is to give mankind the artistic form he envisions as noble for them to imitate (BGE #62 291). The deadliest of the deadly truths is that the labyrinthine “reason of millennia" is nothing more than the blind hand of chance in man's life, "the giant called accident" (TSZ 1.22.2; cf. 3.12.3; A #1). Zarathustra takes the awareness of this as given, and so he has come not to cut the Gordian knot but as an "astringent" power "to tie it again" (RWB sect. 4; EH “Books”, “BT” #4; cf. AOM#30), to close the circle (AOM #125) of "the will of millennia" (TSZ 3.12.29). More specifically, Zarathustra has come to halt two thousand years of anti-nature and desecration of humanity” (EH “Books”, “BT” #4) under the "servitude under purpose" of alleged "rationality" (3.4; cf. WS #2 D #123). He has come to put a stop to "the outrageous contingency that has been playing games with the future of humanity so far" (BGE #203) and produced only "what is now fragment and riddle and grisly accident" (TSZ 2.20). This is to say that Zarathustra is the embodiment of Nietzsche’s formula for happiness: “a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal” (TI “Arrows #44; A #1). The fundamental flux and fluidity of all being means that there is a fundamental "innocence of becoming" (TI "The Four Great Errors" 8). This elemental innocence provides Zarathustra the perspective from which he can view the "it was" (TSZ 2.20) of "all yesterday and today" (2.6) as far back as prehistory or pre-moral period of humanity (BGE #32) without becoming "an angry spectator of everything past" (TSZ 2.20). As Zarathustra teaches,

"everything small is innocent of its smallness" (TSZ 3.9). This is to say that the awareness of man's fundamental ignorance of self-knowledge grounds Zarathustra's love of humanity - his "benevolent severity" (BGE #219) or "inverted pity" (BGE #225) as opposed to "friendly pity" (BGE #206) - and provides him with the means for overcoming the spirit of revenge through forgiveness (WS #68 259). Thus, despite continuous disappointment - and the philosopher is "the one richest in disappointments" (BGE #26) - Zarathustra is constantly returning to set aright the wanderings of his "blind pupils" (HH #122) and the pupils of his pupils when not offering them sanctuary to his own detriment (TSZ 4.9) upon being sought by them in his own dominion of solitude (4.6; 4.11; cf. HH #126; BGE #248). Zarathustra is concerned primarily with "seekers of knowledge" (TSZ 1.22.2, 2.2, 2.12) who wish to see "the ground and background of all things" (3.1; cf. 3.9). They wish to do this from atop "tall masts of knowledge" in order to experience the "no small bliss" (3.11.2) of being able to discern Wisdom from Life because they "look so much alike" (2.10). TSZ is Nietzsche's presentation of his aforementioned contention that there must be a reconciliation between science and self-knowledge (BGE #204). He refers to this reconciliation as "the art of the Olympians" or cheerfulness in the enjoyment of tragedy (D #144). Precisely this is what Nietzsche means by "gay science" (GM Preface #7). That is, far from rejecting modern science wholesale, Nietzsche understands the task of philosophy to be the unification of science with the requisite "childlike" perspective of play in experimentation with values (D #280 504; BGE #94; cf. HH #628; AOM #270). This is none other than the highest metamorphosis of the spirit according to Zarathustra. Thus, Nietzsche understands TSZ as the birth of modern tragedy or, better, the rebirth of tragedy as such meant to solve "the problem of science" he reflectively observed as the

subject of his first book, ​The Birth of Tragedy (AS; TSZ 3.12.7). Indeed, with an echo of his critique that he should have sung his BT(AS #), Nietzsche contends that "the whole of Zarathustra can be considered music" (EH "Books", "Zarathustra" #1; cf. GS #183). The distance between Nietzsche's Zarathustra and man as such is more than that of a hermit in a cave beyond the cities of men. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is the bringer of light into the world of man where darkness is "continually closing in around us" (GS #125 137). More specifically, Zarathustra brings life into the world of man which is quickly becoming a world of shades, an underworld (GS #342; TSZ Prologue 1, cf. 2.18) of men "hoary in their youth" (1.21) as a result of having been overcome by nihilism, which is to say "the great weariness" (4.2 GM 1.12, 2.7), "the great disgust with man" (TSZ 3.13; cf. 2.6) as a result of the death of God (4.6). Yet, it is not so much that God is dead but, rather, that the belief in God is hemorrhaging to death in the wake of modern science and its promulgation through universal education (GS #125; TSZ 1.7; UDHLsect.9 []). The consequence of this is that men are living lives dead of and significant meaning to strive toward with excellence - their souls are not youthful (TSZ 4.6 GS#125; SE sect.). Zarathustra must show them how to live (TSZ 1.11; cf. 2.15) amid the turmoil of secularization (SE sect.4 [148]), the onslaught of the rapidly growing common opinion which claims anything divine is simply unbelievable. In order to do this he must be "the advocate of life" (3.13.1) among "living coffins" (1.9; cf. 2.19 4.2; GS #278) where "the slow suicide of everyone is called - 'life' " (TSZ 1.11) by preachers of death (3.12.10) and world slanderers (3.12.15; cf. D #213 329) Zarathustra's attempts to bridge the distance between himself and man can be seen most clearly in the different ways he speaks to the many, his companions, and himself.

Upon returning to mankind from his solitude Zarathustra discovers that mankind is still intoxicated with "the spiced drink of the great Circe" (BGE #229 168), which is to say traditional morality - "the Circe of humanity" (EH "Books" #5). Mankind is still enamored with the morality which reduces them to animals, a homogenized herd that he will subsequently christen as rabble (cf. GS #195). Accordingly, Zarathustra learns quickly that the truth and nothing but the truth is insufficient (TSZ Prologue 5, 7-8; 4.5.2; 4.13.1; cf. 3.12.26; D #375; GS #50), for the persuasiveness of the rabble's ignorance is a result of the fact that "even Circe was a philosopher" (BGE #208; D Preface #3). The palette of man has been soured by Circe's spice as served up by the preachers of death such that the honey of Zarathustra's wisdom is not sweet to them (TSZ Prologue 1; cf. 2.11; BGE #202). More specifically, whereas Zarathustra voluntarily sought solitude to strengthen his spirit (TSZ 2.6; cf. WS #229; TI "Arrows" #3), the world he left behind prides itself on the softness of their spirit and still has yet to be cloyed from the contentment of happiness and virtue as taught by the good and the just (TSZ Prologue 5, 9; 3.5.2, 3; 3.12.6; 4.11; cf. 2.7). There simply are no ears for Zarathustra (TSZ 3.12.3). Thus, Zarathustra-as-Odysseus with the liberating knowledge of nature to Circe's spice must employ his own "certain art of enchantment" (D Preface #3) to counter Circe's "over-spiced, dangerous, and, above all 'other-worldly' " morality (BGE #198). After all, truth itself is Circe and capable of changing animals back into men after having changed them into animals (HH #519). Accordingly, Zarathustra adjusts the scope of who he will present his teaching to, how he will present it, and the extent to which the contents of it are even true (TSZ 2.17 2.2; cf. 3.12.2 BGE #295). Seeking only those he deems worthy of receiving his teaching as fellow creators, harvesters and celebrators of life (TSZ Prologue.9, cf. 2.7; 3.3), Nietzsche follows

Homer's lead in having Hermes provide his Zarathustra-as-Odysseus the knowledge he needs. That is, Nietzsche has his Zarathustra re-found science according to the knowledge of hermeneutics, which is to say philological interpretation (TSZ 2.4, 2.5, 2.15, 3.9, 3.11.2, 3.12.9-10, 3.13.2, 4.9 [on words]; A #52 [on philology]). Moreover, he chooses to present this teaching in the "rhetoric" (3.9; cf. 4.1) of parables (TSZ 1.22.1; 2.2; 3.12.2,11; D#375). Zarathustra, the interpreter or "unriddler of souls" (TSZ 2.20; 3.12.3; BGE #269) according to the meanings words as well as the meanings of how they are used, recognizes the need to present this teaching in a way that engenders the same enigmatic desire (BGE #) for unriddling souls in others. Thus, precisely because men are not all equal (TSZ 2.7; cf. 2.16), Zarathustra must become a fisherman (4.1) of "divine nut crackers" (3.10.1) of "the nut of existence" (1.15) from the rabble for the sake of humanity. Indeed, such men must be "divine" or "hard" (3.12.29) as the necessary supplement to their capacity for creation precisely because the nut of existence is empty (1.15).